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Shortly after Task Force Kruzenshtern emerged at the rocky, airless planet’s hyperlimit, Commodore Watanabe invited Torma and Ardrix to join him in the flag CIC once more.
“Since you’re as curious as the rest of us, it seems only fair,” he said, indicating vacant workstations when the pair entered. “Without you, we wouldn’t be here.”
This time, Torma resisted glancing at Ardrix. Part of him was beyond tired at his status as the perceived catalyst for the first naval expedition beyond Hegemony space in living memory. If the Regent ever decided on a scapegoat once they returned and faced her wrath, he might well be forced into the role. And should that happen, he would face execution in the State Security Commission Headquarters' basement.
Ardrix would likely be safe, although cloistered at the abbey for the rest of her life. Suddenly, his role as alibi or safeguard didn’t look quite as rosy anymore. Were General Robbins and Admiral Godfrey planning on his acting as the sacrificial offering all along?
He mentally shook himself. “You give me too much credit, sir.”
“Be that as it may. Yet even the smallest pebble can trigger the most devastating landslide.”
Torma’s lips uncharacteristically ran away from him.
“I’ll try not to take that personally, sir.”
Instead of rebuking him for his less than deferential tone, Watanabe chuckled.
“None of us in your situation would feel any different, Colonel.”
Before Torma could debate whether the commodore’s comment merited a response, he felt Ardrix’s hand on his forearm, and the urge to reply vanished.
Instead, he asked, “Can we make out who or what they were, sir?”
Watanabe pointed at a side display.
“Definitely Imperial Navy ship emergency beacons, five of them, but we’re still decrypting the data they’re transmitting.”
“Why would an emergency beacon be using code, sir?” Ardrix asked in a soft tone.
“Operational security, so potential threats can’t tell what sort of ship is in distress, or whether it’s in distress, period. We use the same protocols, Sister.”
“Sir.” One of the duty officers raised her hand. “The sensors pinpointed the signals’ source. Visuals coming up on the primary display now.”
When the image swam into focus, centering on a dark starship hull, Torma let out a low whistle.
“That’s no wreck.”
“Indeed not,” Watanabe replied without glancing at him. “A heavy cruiser, I should think.”
“There are three of them, sir. Along with two smaller frigate-sized ships. They appear to be in the same general condition.”
The heavy cruiser shrank as four more images joined it on the display, each showing what seemed like an intact starship.
“And after so long,” the duty officer added, wonderment in her voice.
“They built solid ships back in those days,” Watanabe’s chief of staff said. “Not that we don’t, but still.”
“Sir, we found a tentative ID. The larger ships are Conqueror class heavy cruisers, and the smaller, Byzance class frigates, the two most common imperial types used during the Ruggero Dynasty. We can’t detect any emissions other than the beacons at this range, not even faint traces of heat from the hulls.”
Watanabe turned his chair to face Torma once more.
“What do you say, Colonel? Shall we join them in orbit and send boarding parties?”
“That is entirely up to you, sir. But why five seemingly intact ships are orbiting this dead world almost two centuries after the empire they served was destroyed intrigues me as much as anyone else. Were their crews perhaps decimated by the so-called Barbarian Plague that supposedly ran through the former empire’s outer sectors like wildfire during that era?”
Watanabe furrowed his brow.
“Hard to say. Most records about this plague date from at least three decades after the empire fell, which could mean it didn’t emerge until a generation later. Still, I suppose we should send remotely operated probes aboard first, nonetheless. Good of you to bring it up.”
When Task Force Kruzenshtern entered orbit a few hundred kilometers ahead of the ghost squadron, closeup imagery revealed scarred and pitted hulls, damaged by decades of micro-meteorite strikes. Some even looked like through and through punctures.
“What in the Almighty’s name happened aboard those ships?” The duty officer whispered as she studied the images.
“Whatever that might be, it surely wasn’t in the Almighty’s name,” Ardrix said in a gentle voice. “There’s a dark aura surrounding them as if something horrible happened long ago. Or I should say the echo of a dark aura that is even now fading back into the Infinite Void. Time erases just about everything except the worst evils, which can last until the end of all things, defying even entropy.”
Watanabe glanced over his shoulder and gave her a strange look. When his eyes shifted to Torma, the latter made a small, helpless shrug that said don’t try to understand a Void Sister’s mystic side.
“But it should be safe for a remotely operated probe?” Watanabe asked.
“It should be safe for flesh and blood, sir. An echo carries no actual power. However, I can’t speak for a virus surviving almost two centuries without a living host. I’m not trained as a healer.”
Watanabe visibly hesitated for a moment, as if wondering whether he should ask about her training, then simply dipped his head by way of acknowledgment.
“I’ll speak with the ship’s chief medical officer in that case, Sister.” Watanabe gestured at his chief of staff. “Repulse and Reprisal will send boarding parties to the furthest two heavy cruisers. Dominator and Devastation will take the two frigates. Terror gets the leading cruiser. Boarding parties shall stay on the outer hull and send remotely operated probes through the airlocks. Once we know what we’re facing, I’ll issue further direction.”
“Yes, sir.”
**
After a few hours in their quarters and a meal, while the various boarding parties prepared for their sorties, Torma and Ardrix returned to the flag CIC and took their by now accustomed seats behind Commodore Watanabe.
“Just in time,” the latter said without turning around. “Boarding parties are leaving their ships now.”
The primary display was once more split into five, each segment showing a standard Navy shuttlecraft nosing its way through open space doors, including that from Repulse.
“If I may inquire, how will they get aboard?”
“Ask any question you like, Sister. It’s quite simple. Our basic starship design principles haven’t changed since imperial days and include certain fail-safes. For instance, should a ship lose power, manual access to door and hatch locking mechanisms is automatically enabled. The boarding parties will simply look for a given airlock’s access panel, open it, and unlatch that airlock. Then, it becomes a matter of brute force. But if necessary, they’ll use laser cutters. I doubt those ships are salvageable, even for parts, after so long since it’s unlikely in the extreme that they used proper storage procedures, as a result, some creative destruction won’t matter.”
“I see.” Ardrix sat back, eyes on the display as silence settled over the CIC.
One by one, the shuttles circled their target ships, studied it from up close until the officer in charge chose the best ingress point. Then they settled on the hull. Several minutes later, space-suited figures emerged from the crafts’ airlocks, a spacer in each boarding party carrying a spherical remotely operated probe roughly the size of a human head.
Ardrix watched with fascination as hidden access hatches popped open beside the designated airlocks and armored arms reached inside to release the mechanical latches. Airlock after airlock opened, three of the five venting a brief burst of atmosphere, proving they’d been under pressure.
One boarding party member per team, carrying a probe, entered. The outer doors closed, and the primary display’s video feeds switched over to five helmet cameras showing the claustrophobic confines of pressurization compartments. According to the labels, the three larger ones were those of the cruisers while the rest belong to the frigates.
New telemetry appeared on side displays, showing ambient temperature, pressure, or lack thereof beyond the inner doors, emission levels, and, surprising no one, the lack of artificial gravity aboard. The latter would make it easier for the probes to move about. But it would be more challenging for the follow-on humans.
Those who’d entered quickly found the inner latch releases and opened the doors, three to a brief rush of air filling the small compartment; the other two, a cruiser and a frigate, were unpressurized beyond the airlock, though to what extent wasn’t immediately apparent. One by one, the globular probes floated out the airlocks and into darkened passageways, their lights catching details here and there. Then...
Ardrix let out a soft gasp. The form on the deck of a pressurized cruiser had clearly been human, long ago, but was now nothing more than a desiccated mummy with wisps of hair still clinging to a mostly bare scalp. And so it went, ship by ship as the probes found mummified bodies, many showing signs of injury. They saw charred clothing, blackened holes, in a few cases split skulls and limbs twisted at odd angles, when they weren’t missing altogether. Nearby black stains on decks and bulkheads could only have been made by human blood.
“It looks like they fought each other,” she said in a subdued tone. “Perhaps that was the dark aura’s echo I sensed.”
“A battle group, or the remains of one whose crews mutinied during Dendera’s downfall, perhaps?” Torma asked. “Some wanted to head for Wyvern and either attack or defend the seat of empire while the rest were opposed?”
Watanabe shrugged.
“Possible. Without recovering the logs, provided their computer cores haven’t decayed, we’ll likely never know.” He tapped the arm of his command chair with his fingertips, then turned to his chief of staff. “Boarding parties shall enter, make full recordings, and see if they can retrieve the computer cores. The configuration shouldn’t differ greatly from ours. At this point, we might as well take the time to investigate what occurred here. Do you concur, Colonel?”
He tossed the last sentence over his shoulder at Torma.
“I do, sir.”
“Excellent. Then I suggest we leave our people to do their thing and reconvene in four hours?”
“As you wish, sir.” Torma and Ardrix stood.
Once back in their quarters, Torma dropped into his by now accustomed chair and exhaled.
“Can you imagine? A crew divided against itself, locked in mortal combat until no one remained standing. I’ll bet the two ships without an atmosphere were depressurized on purpose. Murder on a grand scale, as it were.”
“When passions are roused to a fever pitch, be they because of political, religious, or social disagreements, our species acts without a shred of humanity against those it perceives as being on the opposite side. We consider them not simply wrong but fundamentally evil.”
He nodded.
“Dendera’s Retribution Fleet being the most glaring example.”
“There were equally horrifying instances during our long history. For example, formerly healthy nations self-immolating due to irreconcilable visions of what their societies should be.”
Torma let out an indelicate snort.
“Considering what we know of the divide between our ruling caste and those of us who believe in the Oath of Reunification, do you think the Hegemony could head along that path?”
“Certainly.” She studied him for a few moments. “Many among us believe the Wyvern Hegemony as it stands has no future. It is merely a last and rapidly fading remnant of the long-dead empire, one slowly dying from its own internal contradictions.”
Torma gave her a wry grin.
“Thanks for cheering me up, Sister.” Then he frowned. “Wait a minute. Just many rather than all? I thought the Void Reborn was of one mind.”
“Hardly. The Order is as split along philosophical lines as any large organization. However, those of us who find no future along the current path are considered by a few as heretics of a sort, seeing as how the Void pledged itself to support the Hegemony’s government and its policies.”
He exhaled loudly.
“So, you see no future along the current path. Wonderful.”
“Nothing is set in stone, Crevan. But steering the Hegemony on an alternate course, one which might give it a real future will need courage, vision, and faith. And boldness.”
Her words, as well as her almost ethereal voice, sent involuntary shivers down Torma’s spine as if she’d given him a glance of what could be. Not an echo of the imperial past but a rebirth.